Upton Sinclair, ed. (18781968).The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest. 1915.

Past and Present

By Thomas Carlyle

(One of the most famous of British essayists, 17951881; historian of the French Revolution, and master of a vivid and picturesque prose-style)

DESCEND where you will into the lower class, in Town or Country, by what avenue you will, by Factory Inquiries, Agricultural Inquiries, by Revenue Returns, by Mining-Laborer Committees, by opening your own eyes and looking, the same sorrowful result discloses itself: you have to admit that the working body of this rich English Nation has sunk or is fast sinking into a state, to which, all sides of it considered, there was literally never any parallel. At Stockport Assizes, a Mother and a Father are arraigned and found guilty of poisoning three of their children, to defraud a burial-society of some £3 8s. due on the death of each child: they are arraigned, found guilty; and the official authorities, it is whispered, hint that perhaps the case is not solitary, that perhaps you had better not probe farther into that department of things. In the British land, a human Mother and Father, of white skin and professing the Christian religion, had done this thing; they, with their Irishism and necessity and savagery, had been driven to do it. Such instances are like the highest mountain apex emerged into view; under which lies a whole mountain region and land, not yet emerged. A human Mother and Father had said to themselves, what shall we do to escape starvation? We are deep sunk here, in our dark cellar; and help is far.Yes, in the Ugolino Hungertower stern things happen; best-loved little Gaddo fallen dead on his fathers knees!The Stockport Mother and Father think and hint: Our poor little starveling Tom, who cries all day for victuals, who will see only evil and not good in this world: if he were out of misery at once; he well dead, and the rest of us perhaps kept alive? It is thought, and hinted; at last it is done. And now Tom being killed, and all spent and eaten, Is it poor little starveling Jack that must go, or poor little starveling Will?What a committee of ways and means!